The resignation of Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush’s choice of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to replace him may not mean much change in the United States’ foreign policy regarding religious-freedom issues, according to experts on the subject.
Bush formally selected Rice Nov. 16, two days after her 50th birthday and one day after Powell announced his resignation. Rice, the daughter of an African-American Presbyterian minister, was raised in Alabama. She was the first woman of color to serve as national security adviser and, if confirmed by the Senate, will break the same barrier at the State Department. She is a professing evangelical Christian.
But her actions as secretary of state may differ little from those of her two predecessors — who often came under fire from advocates of international religious freedom — in regard to making religious- liberty and human-rights issues more central to American foreign policy.
“I’m not optimistic” about Rice’s appointment heralding renewed emphasis on religious freedom, said Larry Uzzell, president of the Virginia-based group International Religious Freedom Watch.
‘Misleading’ statement
Uzzell pointed to a press briefing Rice had with reporters prior to Bush’s 2002 trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian studies is Rice’s area of academic expertise.
In the press briefing, Rice noted that Bush was to visit a Christian cathedral and a recently restored Jewish synagogue in that city, giving him “the chance to witness firsthand the right to freedom of worship, which is now thriving in Russia.”
Uzzell said that was, at best, a misleading characterization. “It was shortly after a wave of expulsions of Roman Catholic clergy from Russia” in addition to several other incidents curtailing religious freedom in the former Soviet Union.
“I was extremely disappointed that somebody in Dr. Rice’s position would make such an unqualified statement about the state of church-state relations in Russia.
“That was not helpful for those of us who are trying to nudge that still semi-authoritarian country in the right direction. And right now, Russia is going in the wrong direction,” he said. Of Rice’s commitment to religious freedom as a central focus of American foreign policy, Uzzell continued, “I think Condoleezza Rice is in the Washington mainstream on that issue — and that is not a compliment.”
A senior State Department official familiar with human-rights issues, speaking on the condition that his name not be published, expressed more optimism that his new boss would pay close attention to international religious-freedom issues because of her own “personal sensitivity to religious faith” and the support of the president.
“I can say, as far as the administration goes, and religious-freedom advocacy going forward into a second term, you’ll see an ongoing commitment to religious freedom,” the official said Nov. 17.
Some observers — such as the independent United States Commission on International Religious Freedom — have criticized the State Department under Powell’s leadership and that of his predecessor, Madeleine Albright, for not doing enough to use the mechanisms provided by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act to punish countries that commit egregious violations of their citizens’ liberty of conscience.
Countries of concern
That act created the commission to act as a watchdog agency and also created an ambassador-at-large position for international religious freedom within the State Department itself. The department is charged with publishing an annual report on international religious freedom and with designating major religious-liberty violators as “Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs)” under the terms of the 1998 law.
The law then sets forth a series of actions, including sanctions, the government can take against CPCs.
Although the department has named several nations CPCs under the act, it has not invoked any additional U.S. sanctions on the countries other than those that were already in place for other reasons.
Robert Seiple, the first U.S. ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, said that was partially due to the relatively toothless nature of the religious-freedom office, the human-rights division of the State Department and the department itself in the Washington power scheme.
“If the weakest office in the weakest bureau in the weakest agency in Washington, D.C., is going to have any validity to it, there has to be a massive effort to change that reality or that perception,” he said Nov. 17. “When I was at the State Department, part of my frustration in making things work was that I felt we were part of the junior varsity.”
Seiple is now serving as president of the Pennsylvania-based Institute for Global Engagement. (ABP)
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